Chapter 48: The Bluff
The 9 PM curfew plunged Room 304 into a thick, oppressive darkness. The only light was the thin, yellow blade of moonlight cutting through the gap in the cheap curtains.
Aakash, in his bed, was a still, silent lump, breathing the deep, even breaths of a disciplined sleeper.
Raghav was not sleeping. He was staring at the cracked ceiling, his right arm lying on top of the thin hotel blanket, a useless, throbbing weight.
The pain was no longer a sharp fire. It had settled into a deep, foundational ache, a bass note of agony that pulsed with his heart.
He had lived this before, in his previous life. He'd felt this exact injury after a foolish, over-ambitious throw in a corporate league match. It wasn't a "sore muscle." It was a tear. A partial tear of the rotator cuff.
He knew, with the cold certainty of adult experience, that this was a six-week injury.
And he had to play tomorrow.
